Windows 7 - USB Device not holding data?

So i have had my USB for some time now, and recently i discovered that all files that i had on it (some music and pictures - nothing serious) was corrupted or completely missing. As a man of thought i decided to keep my tears in and format my key, which returned it to it's factory 8GB, good, next thing i do save my pictures (as a test) onto the key, next day, i try to open them, and they are all corrupt.

Any thoughts? all help appreciated.

The USB drive is failing, it should be replaced.

Yeah, this thing is dead.

you sure there is no way of fixing it?

Probably not. To revive it temporarily, you could put it into the frige over night. That may work to pull data off.

But a permanent fix is unlikely - and it is not worth it. These things cost pennies (I recently bought a couple of 16GB sticks for $15 a piece). Why take the risk to loose data.

You could try using this free little program USB Flash Drive Tester - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com It will tell you for certain if the pendrive is faulty

Are you remembering to always "safely remove hardware" first, before you disconnect it from the PC?

Every USB device that is connected in MSC mode (and thus received a Windows driver letter dynamically when it connects) MUST be "safely removed" first, before pulling the cable out. This causes Windows to "flush out all memory buffers" to the device, thus ensuring integrity of data on the device.

Right-click on the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" object in the system tray, and select your device from the list shown. When you receive the "it is now safe to remove hardware" bubble message you can now pull the plug.

If you're already doing this... then I don't know what else it could be that could be causing your problem aside from pure hardware failure, as others have suggested.

The trouble with Pendrives is there are too many cheap Chinese copies doing the rounds with defective memory chips in them . Ideally you should always buy the best you can afford from a well known and respected manufacturer

Must be a very old drive - but all flash memory does have limited write (not read) cycles and eventually wears out.

It's dead, Jim.

I was going to suggest getting up early for Black Friday but I noticed you're in Japan. Places all over town here will have 4GB for $5 and 8GB for $11.